| As an important communicative skill, listening has been a hot topic in foreign language learning and teaching. Involving a continuum of activities, listening is a process which starts from hearing to understanding. Listening comprehension consists of far more than understanding the literal meaning of single word and sentences but involves the understanding of speaker's intended meaning, which is the primary task in listening.Based on a survey made among college students, it is found that the indirect speech exercises in listening range the top difficulty and the most difficult problem students encounter in listening comprehension is the interpretation of the intended meaning of the speaker. On the other hand, having done a research on the transcript of listening part in College English Test from recent years, it is found that the number of the inference type of exercises is increasing year by year. The conclusion can be drawn that the ability of inferring the intended meaning of indirect speech in listening is more and more highly required.And more often than not in daily communication, to build a comfortable and friendly relationship between people in communication people choose indirect speech to express something unpleasant and embarrassing. Therefore, this thesis is going to have a pragmatic analysis of indirect speech in listening to help people have a clear picture of indirect speech and communication competence improvement. The core of the study is to have a pragmatic analysis and discussion of indirect speech.This research is done based on short conversation part in listening materials, among which thousands of indirect speech data are collected from College English Test and College English textbooks and some other tests such as TOEFL, IELSL and so on. Through the indirect speech data analysis functions of indirect speech, contexts indirect speech normally happens in, and factors influence indirect speech are discussed.In this research, qualitative and quantitative ways of study are used. The importance of indirect speech in listening, the necessity of studying indirect speech from pragmatic perspective and functions of indirect speeches are presented through qualitative study. And the indirect speech data analysis and discussion is from the quantitative way of study.In data analysis, pragmatic indirect speech related theories are applied.They are:speech act theory and indirect speech act theory, cooperative principle and conversational implicature, the politeness principle and "face threatening" Through thousands of indirect speech collection and typical ones analysis, suggestions for indirect speech studying and teaching are offered for students and teachers. It is expected to have positive effects on people's indirect speech understanding. Studying indirect speech in listening from pragmatic perspective attaches importance on language pragmatic use and emphasizes the communicative feature of language.Although applying pragmatics in listening is relatively new, there is much advantage compared with the traditional listening studying. New as it is, there still exists much room for the exploration of applying pragmatic theory in English listening teaching and learning, and which needs further study and discussion. |
